Verification of Payee, One Year Later: Results and Next Steps

9 October 2026 marks the first anniversary of the Verification of Payee scheme, or “VOP”, introduced by the European Payments Council (EPC) across the euro area.

One year on, the initial indicators point to success at scale: around 8 billion checks, with responses almost always delivered in under a second.

They also highlight the next priorities: explaining why some checks cannot be completed, expanding the scheme’s geographical scope and strengthening cooperation across the financial sector to combat fraud.

Information that changes the bank transfer experience

When a user prepares a bank transfer, one question always arises: “Am I sending my payment to the right person?”

VOP provides reassurance before the payment is authorised. The payer’s bank queries the recipient’s bank to check whether the IBAN and name match. The result is then communicated instantly to the payer.

Europeans now take this feedback for granted. Having this check in place before every transfer is a significant achievement, given the implementation work it required across more than 3,000 financial institutions in the euro area.

VOP in numbers: already operating at scale

The data presented by the EPC in August 2026 shows how far the scheme has come. Around 2.2 billion VOP requests were recorded in Q2 2026. At a constant volume, this represents more than 8.8 billion checks over a year.

Another striking indicator: 95% of responses arrive in under a second. For a check embedded in the payment journey, this is essential.

These figures show that the European scheme operates at scale and can handle substantial volumes while maintaining fast response times.

The EPC also provides a breakdown of VOP request outcomes:

1. Match / Exact match = 66.2%
2. Close match / Partial match = 16.2%
3. No match / No correspondence = 15.4%
4. Not applicable / Check cannot be completed = 1.4%
5. Error / Invalid request = 0.8%

If a payee is considered confirmed whenever a “Match” or “Close match” result is returned (the account holder’s name is returned by their bank in the case of a “Close match”), this amounts to a confirmation rate of over 82% across all VOP requests. The results can therefore be considered highly relevant in most cases.

This raises the question of how to improve the quality of the remaining results and extend the scheme’s reach as fraud itself becomes increasingly professionalised and industrialised.

VOP 2.0: making checks easier to understand

While the “No match” status seems fairly clear, “Not Applicable”, meaning that the check cannot be completed, is less straightforward. It highlights room for improvement in how the scheme’s results can be interpreted.

Today, this response covers several very different situations: a closed account, an incorrect account number, an account outside the scope of VOP or missing data.

The EPC’s work towards launching VOP 2.0 as early as 2027 includes providing more detailed reasons alongside these responses. This development could deliver a tangible improvement in the information available to users.

An upcoming expansion in geographical scope

On 9 July 2027, PSPs located in EU Member States whose currency is not the euro will be required to implement Verification of Payee. Six EU countries fall into this category: Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Sweden and Czechia.

This extends the requirement to transfers in euros; it does not make VOP mandatory for all payments in local currencies.

FRIDA: a new tool to complement VOP

VOP has established a communication mechanism between European financial institutions. The next major initiative, FRIDA — Fraud Information Distribution Arrangement, is intended to organise the sharing of fraud information between them.

Also led by the EPC, the scheme envisages a common framework and a central platform for sharing information on bank accounts suspected of being fraudulent. The scheme is expected to come into effect in H2 2028.

The two schemes are highly complementary. VOP checks whether the payee’s details match. FRIDA is intended to facilitate the exchange of information that could reveal a fraud risk.

For financial institutions, the key challenge will be to integrate both schemes into their fraud prevention tools to improve their detection and response capabilities.